Alchemical Symbolism in the VMS

[MarcoP]

A few months ago, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. mentioned this great alchemical illustration.



According to You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., the source is Leiden MS. Vossianus Chym. F. 29. (Erfurt, 1522-1526?) f73. If I understand correctly, the illustration is attributed to Johannes Hoch. The web page also links a different, simpler version of the illustration (published by Van Lennep, in “Alchimie”).

In my opinion, some details can be compared specifically with features in VMS f80r:

• An angel “pushing” a girl towards a young man in a bathing tub could resemble the top-right VMS scene, where a man “pushes” a “nymph” towards the central bathing nymph.
  
• There are a profusion of “putti” which could in part correspond to the “nymphs”. Those at the top right are emerging from vases and can be compared with the nymphs at the sides of VMS f80r. Others are floating on cloud-bands and are also somehow comparable to some Quire 13 illustrations. Several putti, like many "nymphs", are holding "attributes".
  
• Finally, the tiny detail of the cross-shaped gem diadem of the woman holding the scales. A vaguely similar diadem is worn by one of the top “nymphs”.
  

I think it is interesting to see several analogies (however "thin") between these two specific VMS and alchemical pages. But all this might still be coincidental and its relevance is likely quite small (as Rene wrote, the alchemical illustration is one century later than the VMS). Moreover, the meaning of the alchemical illustration is mostly unclear to me, so I cannot use it to formulate hypotheses about the similar traits in the VMS. 

Yet images like this confirm that (as observed by Jennifer Rampling in her Yale facsimile article) a wide and creative usage of personification occurred in alchemical manuscripts and might also be present in VMS Quire 13.

[PS: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. of the Leiden page]